tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-362354182017-08-15T16:39:00.769-07:00Tractatus Blogico-PhilosophicusMy plan is to post translations of and comments on Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Please feel free to comment.DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.comBlogger535125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-66573501276718668782013-02-01T10:26:00.001-08:002014-05-07T06:25:36.460-07:00Hey, where's the free book?It's here:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.academia.edu/6962427/Wittgensteins_Tractatus_A_Students_Edition">https://www.academia.edu/6962427/Wittgensteins_Tractatus_A_Students_Edition</a><br /><br />The "book" version of the text is slightly different from the blog version, in content as well as format. That is, I once went to edit the "book" version and found that I had already made the change I had in mind, even though I had not altered the blog. I don't remember what other changes I did or did not make, but the "book" version is&nbsp;likely&nbsp;to be more polished than the blog.Duncan Richterhttps://plus.google.com/102767504723812197399noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-6228225882887746312009-05-15T05:50:00.000-07:002009-08-19T06:10:05.023-07:00Hey, free book!Here's a draft of a book based on this blog: <a href="http://www7.vmi.edu/uploadedFiles/Faculty_Webs/PSPH/RichterDJ/Tractatus%20Logico-Philosophicus%20in%20book%20form.pdf"><span style="font-style: italic;">Wittgenstein's </span>Tractatus: <span style="font-style: italic;">A Student's Guide</span></a>. It should appear in book format if you print two pages per sheet.DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-61317363037236744532007-12-05T11:02:00.000-08:002008-04-02T11:10:25.936-07:00<span style="COLOR: rgb(153,0,0)">7 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.</span> <p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">And this tautology is what is so hard for the philosopher to accept.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>The goal of the book, it seems, is to lead one to acceptance, to peace.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Cf. PI 133.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>The TLP offers one method, the PI perhaps another.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Or more than one.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Cf. Schopenhauer: Kant “had circumnavigated the world and shown that because it is round, one cannot get out of it by horizontal movement.” (<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">The World as Will and Idea</span> trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (3 volumes, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1883), vol. II, p. 10). </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in">Ostrow (p. 133) sees an ethical obligation here, since failure to remain silent would indicate a refusal to accept reality or the course of one’s own experience.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Yet see what Wittgenstein says about talking nonsense in the Lecture on Ethics.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in">Friedlander (p. 148) notes that<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Wittgenstein talks about speaking (<i>sprechen</i>) not saying (<i>sagen</i>).<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>“What is at stake here is, then, an actual intervention with speech rather than the abstract opposition of the sayable and the unsayable.”<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>He continues, in the next paragraph: “Moreover, the opposite of silence is not necessarily speaking with sense but, rather, making noise.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Speaking without sense is one way of being noisy.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>The ending of the <i>Tractatus</i> should therefore be read in conjunction with the epigraph of the book, which places the act of expression against a background of noise: “…and whatever a man knows, whatever is not mere rumbling and roaring that he has heard, can be said in three words.”<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>The implication is that the noise of empty talk, whether it be nonsense or mere mindlessness, conceals something.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>To be silent means primarily not to fall prey to the rumbling and roaring of rumor.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Silence is what we need in order to be attentive to what there is, to the showing of truth.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in">This seems to go perhaps farther than the text warrants, but Wittgenstein’s remarks about <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Moore</st1:city></st1:place> (in his comment on Heidegger) bear some of it out.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>As does Kierkegaard’s valuing of silence.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>There is still some dubious residue though, I think.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in">Friedlander (pp. 149-150) goes on to show how Wittgenstein’s views on silence were not simple, at least later in his life.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>We must not, he seems to say there, be silent about important matters (e.g. God) just because chatterboxes talk a lot of nonsense about such things.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>But it still seems important to him not to be one of these chatterboxes.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>He gave his word to a friend of his (Drury) that he would not refuse to talk to him about God or religion.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>It does not follow that he would have no objection to a philosopher publishing works for a general (i.e. wide, impersonal) audience on such subjects.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in">Then again, Nordmann (p. 156) says that “one remains silent when speaking nonsense knowingly.”<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>As long as we do not actually say anything, we can speak as much as we like (which perhaps will not be very much, of course), so long as we know what we are doing and do not lay any “claim on what is inexpressible in speech.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in">Schopenhauer <i>Fourfold Root </i>p. 154: “Indeed, there are some [ideas] which never find words, and alas these are the best.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in"><span lang="DE">Black (p. 378) quotes Silesius: “<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Schweig, Allerliebster, schweig: kannst du nur gänzlich schweigen,/ So wird dir Gott mehr Gut’s, als du begehrst, erzeigen</span>." This is translated by Maria Shrady in Angelus Silesius <em>The Cherubinic Wanderer</em> (Paulist Press, 1986) thus: "Silence, Beloved, be still; if you be wholly quiet, God will show you more good than you know how to desire." (p. xi) This disguises the repetition of <em>schweigen</em>, though, so perhaps "Silence, beloved, silence: if you can only be completely silent, then God will show you more good than you know how to desire" might be preferable.</span></p><div><div id="ftn1"><p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=36235418&amp;postID=6131736303723674453#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size:0;"></span></span></a><i></i></p></div></div>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-58683917653993062362007-12-05T10:53:00.000-08:002007-12-05T11:01:44.349-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.54 My propositions elucidate by whoever understands me perceiving them in the end as nonsensical, when through them – upon them – over them, he has climbed out.<span style=""> </span>(He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed out upon it.)</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>He must overcome these propositions, then he sees the world rightly.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">More images of inversion, like a kitten escaping from a sweater by, trying to run or climb, turning the sweater inside out.<span style=""> </span>What does the enlightened reader climb out <i style="">of</i> after all?<span style=""> </span>Surely the very propositions that he climbs through, on, and over.<span style=""> </span>And how can Wittgenstein be so sure that he will then see the world rightly?<span style=""> </span>Because, whatever else might be the case, he will no longer be in the grip of philosophical/metaphysical illusion.<span style=""> </span>“Overcome” is more literal and everyday than “transcend,” and gets across the idea of struggle.<span style=""> </span>It is preferred therefore by Cora Diamond.<span style=""> </span>See footnote 33, p. 121 of Diarmuid Costello “’Making Sense’ of Nonsense” in Barry Stocker, ed. <i style="">Post-Analytic </i>Tractatus, Ashgate, 2004.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 33pt;"><span style="" lang="DE">The ladder image occurs in Fritz Mauthner’s <i style="">Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache </i>(Stuttgart: Cotta, 1901-3), vol. I, p. 2, and in Schop WWR vol. 2, p. 80.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 33pt;">On p. 78 Anscombe says that “Wittgenstein used to say that the <i style="">Tractatus </i>was not <i style="">all </i>wrong: it was not like a bag of junk professing to be a clock, but like a clock that did not tell you the right time.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 33pt;">Friedlander (p. 13) says: “Logically speaking, the <i style="">Tractatus </i>does not exist.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 33pt;">Cf. CV p. 7: "I might say: if the place I want to get to could only be reached by way of a ladder, I would give up trying to get there. For the place I really have to get to is a place I must already be at now.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 33pt;">"Anything that I might reach by climbing a ladder does not interest me."<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 33pt;">Nordmann (p. 23) quotes Lichtenberg: “we always teach true philosophy with the language of the false one.”<span style=""> </span>From Georg Christoph Lichtenberg <i style="">Aphorisms and Letters </i>ed. Franz Mautner and Henry Hatfield, <st1:city st="on">London</st1:City>: <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Jonathan</st1:PlaceName> <st1:placename st="on">Cape</st1:PlaceName></st1:place>, 1969, p. 53.<span style=""> </span>According to Nordmann (p. 199, note 86): “<i style="">TLP </i>6.54 (“my sentences are nonsensical”) is nonsense <i style="">par excellence </i>and therefore self-exemplifying.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 33pt;">Cf. also Plato’s divided line in the <i style="">Republic </i>(Book VI, especially 511b-e).<span style=""> </span>Here Plato contrasts the activity of geometers with that of philosophers, philosophers being distinguished by their going back to the beginning and not basing their reasoning on any assumptions.<span style=""> </span>In philosophy, in Waterfield’s translation (p. 239), “When [reason] takes things for granted, it doesn’t treat them as starting-points, but as basic in the strict sense—as platforms and rungs, for example.<span style=""> </span>These serve it until it reaches a point where nothing needs to be taken for granted, and which is the starting-point for everything.<span style=""> </span>Once it has grasped this starting-point, it turns around and by a process of depending on the things which depend from the starting-point, it descends to an end-point.<span style=""> </span>It makes absolutely no use of anything perceptible by the senses: it aims for types by means of types alone, in and of themselves, and it ends its journey with types.”<span style=""> </span>It is worth noting that Russell’s <i style="">The Problems of Philosophy</i>, which was published in 1912, specially recommends Plato’s <i style="">Republic </i>for the “student who wishes to acquire an elementary knowledge of philosophy” (along with six classics<i style=""> </i>of early modern philosophy) and especially picks out Books VI and VII from the <i style="">Republic</i>.<span style=""> </span>It seems likely, then, that Wittgenstein, who was first formally taught philosophy by Russell in late 1911, would have read this part of the <i style="">Republic</i>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 33pt;">Also possibly relevant, from Book VII of the <i style="">Republic </i>533c: “For if your starting-point is unknown, and your end-point and intermediate stages are woven together out of unknown material, there may be coherence, but knowledge is completely out of the question.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 33pt;">And compare Schopenhauer <i style="">Fourfold Root </i>p. 120: “But it would be downright chicanery and nothing else, if the attempt were made to compare or even identify the honest and thorough analysis here given of empirical intuitive perception into its elements, such elements proving to be subjective, with Fichte’s algebraical equations between the <i style="">ego </i>and <i style="">non-ego</i>; with that sophist’s pseudo-demonstrations, requiring the cloak of incomprehensibility and even nonsense to deceive the reader; with explanations such as the <i style="">ego </i>spinning the <i style="">non-ego </i>out of itself; in short, with all the tomfoolery of scientific emptiness.”<span style=""> </span>Is the TLP comparable to Fichte’s work in some such way?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 33pt;">White (pp. 115-117) sets out various ways in which Wittgenstein has ‘said’ things that, he says, cannot be said, e.g. in his remarks on formal concepts and the logical form of propositions that is shared with reality.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 33pt;">Schopenhauer WWR Vol. II, p. 80: “However, for the man who studies to gain <i style="">insight</i>, books and studies are merely rungs of the ladder on which he climbs to the summit of knowledge.<span style=""> </span>As soon as a rung has raised him one step, he leaves it behind.<span style=""> </span>On the other hand, the many who study in order to fill their memory do not use the rungs of the ladder for climbing, but take them off and load themselves with them to take away, rejoicing at the increasing weight of the burden.<span style=""> </span>They remain below forever, because they bear what should have borne them.”<span style=""> </span>See David Avraham Weiner <i style="">Genius and Talent: Schopenhauer’s Influence on Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy </i>(Associated University Presses, London, 1992), pp. 42-43 for more on this.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 33pt;">Black (p. 377) also quotes Sextus Empiricus comparing a skeptic who proves the non-existence of proof to a man who kicks over a ladder after he has used it to climb to a high place. <i style=""><span style=""> </span></i><span style=""> <br /></span></p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-632485930523392862007-12-05T08:31:00.000-08:002011-01-17T06:18:48.708-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.53 The right method for philosophy would properly be this: To say nothing other than what can be said, thus propositions of natural science – thus something that has nothing to do with philosophy –, and then always, if another wanted to say something metaphysical, to point out to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions.<span style=""> </span>This method would be unsatisfying for the other person – he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy – but it would be the only strictly correct one.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Not the method used in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Tractatus</span>, apparently (it does not seem to consist solely of propositions of natural science, after all), but perhaps the one used (in attempt, at least) by certain Wittgensteinians.<span style=""> </span>Why does he not use it here?<span style=""> </span>It is an <i>ad hominem</i> method, and here he wants a general approach.<span style=""> </span>He, as it were, demonstrates a method, by examples.<span style=""> </span>But it also is somewhat <i>ad hominem</i>, with Frege and Russell being the most obvious targets.<span style=""> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""></span>How would the strictly correct method be justified? The demonstration of a method (or methods) works, if at all, by being shown or found to be successful. If the aim is clarity, then the method would be justified by being shown to lead to clarity. <span style=""> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""></span>Consider the method advocated here in possible application to Frege.<span style=""> </span>Frege never <i style="">defines</i> “course-of-values.”<span style=""> </span>See <i style="">Basic Laws </i>vol. 2 §146.<span style=""> </span>He says it cannot be defined, even though he uses the concept a lot and introduces it as early as §3.<i style=""> </i><span style=""> </span>All that he can do, he says, is to give hints as to the meanings of such terms, and hope that the reader gets the idea.<span style=""> </span>But in such cases, Weiner points out (see pp. 159-160 of Reck), it is possible that the author himself has failed to give a meaning to his term.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Anscombe (p. 151): “The criticism of sentences as expressing no real thought, according to the principles of the <i style="">Tractatus</i>, could never be of any very simple general form; each criticism would be <i style="">ad hoc</i>, and fall within the subject-matter with which the sentence professed to deal.”<span style=""> </span>Wittgenstein is not, for instance, putting forward a verificationist criterion of meaning.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Black (p. 377): “It will be noticed, of course, that the method pursued in the <i style="">Tractatus </i>is <i style="">not </i>the ‘correct’ one.”</p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-30566909904668763632007-12-05T08:28:00.000-08:002007-12-05T08:31:01.669-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.522 There is to be sure the unspeakable [unutterable, ineffable].<span style=""> </span>This <i style="">shows</i> itself, it is the mystical.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Black (p. 376) offers “the inexpressible” as a literal translation of <i style="">Unaussprechliches</i>.<i style=""> </i><span style=""> </span>Does Wittgenstein mean that philosophers want to do something that cannot be done, and that this something is the mystical?<span style=""> </span>Is it mystical that there should be such a problem?<span style=""> </span>Or does he mean that we can call “the ineffable” or “the mystical” whatever it is (although, in fact, he has shown it to be illusory) that philosophers want to try to express?<span style=""> </span>Otherwise 6.522 seems to contradict 6.5, on which it is a comment!<span style=""> </span>In <span style="font-style: italic;">Letters to </span><st1:place style="font-style: italic;" st="on"><st1:city st="on">Ogden</st1:City></st1:place>, p. 37, he says that <i style="">das Mystiche </i>here is the same as in the case of 6.44 but not the same as 6.45.<span style=""> </span>So is it not a feeling?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Anscombe (p. 19): “There is indeed much that is inexpressible—which we must not try to state, but must contemplate without words.”<span style=""> </span>See comment on 1.1.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Friedlander (p. 143 note 19) argues that Ogden’s translation of “<i style="">Es gibt</i>”<i style=""> </i>as “There is” is preferable to P&amp;McG’s reference to things that make themselves manifest, since that “makes the ending most problematic.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Nordmann (pp. 50-51) argues that <i style="">unaussprechlich </i>should be translated ‘inexpressible in speech.’<span style=""> </span>It is not the same as ‘unsayable’, since a proposition can say (as in 5.542’s “’p’ says p”), but refers rather to the ability (or inability) of a human subject to get something out in language.<span style=""> </span>4.115 is the only place in the TLP where Wittgenstein mentions the sayable and the unsayable.<span style=""> </span>Nordmann contrasts the expressible in speech with what is expressible in music, gesture, or conduct.<span style=""> </span>He sees this remark as following from the denial of what needs to be denied (its contrary) in order to avoid the contradiction in 6.41 (see p. 194).<span style=""> </span>Yet he also sees this remark itself as nonsensical because it fails to establish a subject-predicate relation, and is therefore ungrammatical.<span style=""> </span>See p. 198.<span style=""> </span>Nevertheless, he persists.<span style=""> </span>On pp. 198-199 he writes: “That the words “there is indeed the inexpressible in speech” are nonsensical and have no sense makes the point that there is, indeed, the inexpressible in speech.”</p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-9429473431774913462007-12-05T08:27:00.001-08:002007-12-05T08:27:50.446-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.521 The solution of the problem of life is perceived in the vanishing of this problem.<span style=""> </span></p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>(Is not this the reason why people to whom the meaning [<span style="font-style: italic;">Sinn</span>] of life has become clear after long doubt could not then say in what this meaning consists?)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Anscombe says (p. 170) that this shows that Wittgenstein does not think all thoughts of the meaning of life are nonsense.<span style=""> </span>After all, how could it become clear unless it could at least be shown? </p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-20692877826890594052007-12-05T08:25:00.000-08:002007-12-05T08:27:01.261-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.52 We feel that even if all <i style="">possible</i> questions of natural science were to be answered, our life problems [existential problems?] would still not have been touched at all.<span style=""> </span>Of course there would then be no more questions remaining; and just this is the answer.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It is?<span style=""> </span>One possible interpretation: These questions, the life ones, are illusory.<span style=""> </span>They are not questions, but feelings of a certain kind.<span style=""> </span>Feelings that feel as though they will go away when an answer is found, but that can be shown to be unanswerable by any possible answer.<span style=""> </span>And so we see that the feelings are misleading.<span style=""> </span>Will they then go away?<span style=""> </span>Maybe, maybe not.<span style=""> </span>But we can at least deal with them honestly, knowing them for what they are (not).</p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-68347829903785873572007-12-05T08:24:00.000-08:002007-12-05T08:25:32.946-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.51 Skepticism is <i style="">not </i>irrefutable, but rather manifestly nonsensical [<i style="">offenbar unsinnig</i>], if it would doubt where nothing can be asked.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>Since doubt can only exist where a question exists; a question only where an answer exists, and this only where something <i style="">can</i> be <i style="">said</i>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The ‘if’ might be worth noting here.<span style=""> </span>Wondering about the meaning of life would then be manifestly nonsensical too.<span style=""> </span>Cf. Kant’s <i style="">Critique of Pure Reason</i>: “To know what questions may reasonably be asked is already a great and necessary proof of sagacity and insight.<span style=""> </span>For if a question is absurd in itself and calls for an answer where none is required, it not only brings shame on the propounder of the question, but may betray an incautious listener into absurd answers, thus presenting, as the ancients said, the ludicrous spectacle of one man milking a he-goat and the other holding a sieve underneath.” (A 58/B 82-83)</p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-72112863014742184982007-12-05T08:23:00.000-08:002007-12-05T08:24:39.476-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.5 If it requires an answer that one cannot articulate, then one also cannot articulate the question.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span><i style="">The riddle </i>does not exist. </p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>If a question can be put at all, then it <i style="">can</i> also be answered.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The second sentence refers back to 6.4312.<span style=""> </span>6.5 supports my interpretation of 6.4312.<span style=""> </span>But is even 6.5 meant to be nonsense?<span style=""> </span>What are we told here, after all?<span style=""> </span>In <span style="font-style: italic;">Letters to </span><st1:place style="font-style: italic;" st="on"><st1:city st="on">Ogden</st1:City></st1:place>, Wittgenstein says (p. 37) that his reference here to “the riddle” “means as much as “the riddle ‘par excellence’”.”<span style=""> </span>Joachim Schulte on p. 132 of his essay in Stern and Szabados eds. <i style="">Wittgenstein Reads Weininger </i>suggests that the reference here and in 6.4312 might be allusions to Weininger.<span style=""> </span>On pp. 128-129 Schulte quotes Weininger to the effect that “the deepest problem in the universe” is constituted by the riddle of life together with the riddle of the world.<span style=""> </span>The riddle of the world is said to be the riddle of dualism, while the riddle of life is the riddle of time.<span style=""> </span>Weininger links the fact that life is not reversible with the meaning of life, and claims that, “<i style="">The unidirectionality of time is … identical with the fact that the human being is at bottom a being that wills</i>.”<a style="" href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style=""> </span>Of course, as Schulte notes, there is a lot of irony and paradox in Weininger.<span style=""> </span>Wittgenstein discusses the unidirectionality of time in <i style="">Notebooks </i>12 October 1916.</p> <div style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br /> <hr align="left" size="1" width="33%"> <!--[endif]--> <div style="" id="ftn1"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Weininger <i style="">On Last Things</i>, p. 89.</p> </div> </div>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-5328628090933469282007-12-05T08:21:00.000-08:002007-12-05T08:23:19.483-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.45 The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a – limited – whole.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>The feeling of the world as a limited whole is the mystical.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But this too is impossible, nonsense.<span style=""> </span>Isn’t it?<span style=""> </span>Wittgenstein says ““<i style="">das mystiche</i>” is an adjective belonging to “<i style="">Gefühl</i>” here, and considers the translation “the mystical feeling,” although he prefers simply “the mystical,” see <span style="font-style: italic;">Letters to </span><st1:place style="font-style: italic;" st="on"><st1:city st="on">Ogden</st1:City></st1:place>, pp. 36-37.<span style=""> </span>See notes on 1 for Spinoza and Schopenhauer on this kind of contemplation.</p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-84814141536235659672007-12-04T06:09:00.000-08:002007-12-04T06:10:32.993-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.44 The mystical is not <i style="">how</i> the world is, but rather <i style="">that</i> it is.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And this is beyond language, haven’t we seen above?<span style=""> </span>Indeed, isn’t “There is a world” nonsense?<span style=""> </span>Frege distinguishes between mere existence and actuality, between existence and existence in a spatio-temporal field, causal chains, etc.<span style=""> </span>(See Sluga’s book on Frege, pp. 88-90.)<span style=""> </span>In Frege’s terms, ‘is’ in ‘There is a world’ could only be used in the very thin sense, and it isn’t clear what this sense is.<span style=""> </span>“Affirmation of existence is indeed nothing other than denial of the number zero.<span style=""> </span>Since existence is a property of concepts, the ontological proof of the existence of God fails in its aim.” (<span style="font-style: italic;">Foundations of Arithmetic</span>, §53.)<span style=""> </span>Saying ‘A world exists’ is saying something about the concept world, namely that it is instantiated, while saying ‘The world exists’, if “the world” is meant to be the name of something specific, makes no sense.<span style=""> </span>“With a concept the question is always whether anything, and if so what, falls under it.<span style=""> </span>With a proper name such questions make no sense.<span style=""> </span>We should not be deceived by the fact that language makes use of proper names, for instance Moon, as concept words, and vice versa; this does not affect the distinction between the two.<span style=""> </span>As soon as a word is used with the indefinite article or in the plural without any article, it is a concept word.” (<span style="font-style: italic;">Foundations of Arithmetic</span>, §51).</p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-80446614868502211392007-12-04T06:08:00.000-08:002007-12-04T06:09:03.863-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.4321 The facts all belong only to the assignment, not to the correct response to it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">If we see life in these terms, that is.<span style=""> </span>“Correct response” instead of “solution” because in <span style="font-style: italic;">Letters to </span><st1:place style="font-style: italic;" st="on"><st1:city st="on">Ogden</st1:City></st1:place>, p. 36, Wittgenstein says the word should be appropriate for, e.g. the digging of a hole when someone tells someone to dig a hole. </p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-57173778660725988612007-12-04T06:07:00.000-08:002007-12-04T06:08:26.237-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.432 <i style="">How</i> the world is, is completely indifferent for what is Higher.<span style=""> </span>God does not disclose [or: manifest, reveal] himself <i style="">in</i> the world.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What believer could accept this?<span style=""> </span>God is not manifest in the world, and couldn’t care less what happens in it?<span style=""> </span>Is this pure atheism, or a kind of philosophical theism taken to its limit?</p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-56177263260868480692007-12-04T06:06:00.000-08:002007-12-04T06:07:41.415-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.4312 The temporal immortality of the soul of man, meaning therefore its eternal survival even after death, is not only in no way guaranteed, but in the first place this assumption does not at all do what people have always wanted to achieve with it.<span style=""> </span>Is a riddle thereby solved, because I survive eternally?<span style=""> </span>Is eternal life, on this account, then not just as mysterious as the present one?<span style=""> </span>The solving of the riddle of life in space and time lies <i style="">outside</i> of space and time.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>(It is indeed not problems of natural science that are to be solved.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Ah, but is the solution to this riddle found in the disappearance of the riddle?<span style=""> </span>See CV, p. 27 (1937), and p. 74 and p. 75.<span style=""> </span>Is there a riddle really?<span style=""> </span>Or is the experience of life as a riddle more like an unpleasant feeling in response to awareness of the mystery of life.<span style=""> </span>And that awareness itself might not seem to be anything (awareness of anything) if we think it through.<span style=""> </span>“Mystery” might perhaps be better than “riddle” here.<span style=""> </span>Wittgenstein, in <span style="font-style: italic;">Letters to </span><st1:place style="font-style: italic;" st="on"><st1:city st="on">Ogden</st1:City></st1:place>, p. 36, says: “I don’t w<h>ish that there should be anything ridiculous or profane or frivolous in the word when used in the connection “riddle of life” etc.”</p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-74599261203130121772007-12-04T06:05:00.000-08:002007-12-04T06:06:15.293-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.4311 Death is not an event in life.<span style=""> </span>One does not live through death.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>If one understands eternity not as an endless period of time but as timelessness, then he who lives in the present lives eternally.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>Our life is just as endless as our field of vision is limitless.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I.e., not really, but in some, not very comforting, sense.<span style=""> </span>I think nonsensical ideas are being deflated here, but quite possibly ones to which Wittgenstein felt very drawn.<span style=""> </span>Hence the ethical, practical nature of the ironic debunking of treasured idols.<span style=""> </span>The irony here is not sarcasm but a pretty much essential means to the kind of goal Wittgenstein is aiming at.<span style=""> </span>He must say nothing false, but speak only truth and nonsense.<span style=""> </span>The nonsense is revealed as nonsense by being pushed through to its painful conclusion.<span style=""> </span>This involves a kind of inversion, as does irony.<span style=""> </span>Wittgenstein suggested “without limit” instead of “limitless,” but only on the grounds that “limitless” is not normal English.<span style=""> </span>I think it is though, so I have left it in.<span style=""> </span>It is a more literal translation of the German <i style="">grenzenlos</i>.</p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-37853708018432577702007-12-04T06:04:00.000-08:002007-12-04T06:05:22.210-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.431 As too at death the world does not change, but rather stops.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""></span>Why say “the world” here instead of “my world”?</p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-3556343821550384782007-12-04T06:01:00.000-08:002007-12-04T06:04:24.050-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.43 If good or evil willing alters the world, then it can only alter the limits of the world, not the facts; not that which can be expressed through language.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>In short, the world must then thereby become an altogether different one.<span style=""> </span>It must, so to speak, wane or wax as a whole.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>The world of the happy is a different one than that of the unhappy.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But how can it be?<span style=""> </span>Is this a kind of reductio?<span style=""> </span>It shows that good or evil willing cannot alter the world.<span style=""> </span>This is also shown by the fact that, if it were otherwise, such willing would change something that cannot be expressed through language.<span style=""> </span>But there is no such thing, we cannot possibly make sense of this idea.<span style=""> </span>And what cannot be said cannot be thought, or believed, or etc.<span style=""> </span>Pears and McGuinness have “happy man” even though Wittgenstein explicitly asked <st1:city st="on">Ogden</st1:City> to remove the word “man” from the translation (see Letters to <st1:place style="font-style: italic;" st="on"><st1:city st="on">Ogden</st1:City></st1:place> p. 35).</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Cf. <i style="">Notebooks</i> p. 73.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Schopenhauer contrasts altruism with egoism in a way that comes readily to mind when reading TLP 6.43.<span style=""> </span>Egoism concentrates, while altruism expands.<span style=""> </span>See WWR I: 373-4, and Young <i style="">Schopenhauer </i>pp. 229-231.<span style=""> </span>“That Wittgenstein’s waxing/waning metaphor so strongly recalls Schopenhauer’s expansion/contraction metaphor makes it look as though Wittgenstein’s person of ‘good will’ is the Schopenhauerian altruist and the person of ‘bad will’ is the Schopenhauerian egoist.<span style=""> </span>In fact, though, I think, only the second half of this equation holds.<span style=""> </span>What Wittgenstein really means by the ‘good exercise of the will’ is a version of asceticism, of Schopenhauer’s ‘denial of the will.’”<a style="" href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style=""> </span>So it is not about altruistic willing, but rather giving up willing altogether, as far as that can be done.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">According to Schopenhauer, we need not only detachment from desire (Stoicism) but the abandonment of desire (Cynicism).<span style=""> </span>Wittgenstein seems to have lived like a Cynic, choosing poverty and asceticism.<a style="" href="#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Mounce (p. 96): “Wittgenstein does not mean that the ethical attitude is itself a matter of temperament.<span style=""> </span>On the contrary, one’s temperament is just another of the facts <i style="">towards which </i>one has to adopt an ethical attitude.”<span style=""> </span>[But, Friedlander asks, “what is an attitude toward the world, and in what sense is it not part of psychology?” (pp. 197-198)]<span style=""> </span>The stuff about the world of the happy is only an analogy, Mounce insists.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Anscombe calls the will that alters the limits of the world but effects nothing in it “chimerical” (p. 172).<span style=""> </span>Will, like intention, she suggests, resides in what we do.<span style=""> </span>See PI 644.<span style=""> </span>In a footnote on p. 172, she says that Schopenhauer identifies the world with my will, and regards them both as bad.<span style=""> </span>Wittgenstein sees the world as good and independent of my will.<span style=""> </span>Schopenhauer’s idea of a good will is one that denies itself.<span style=""> </span>Similarly, Wittgenstein’s good will is not concerned with how things are, it accepts the world as it is, however it is, “and in that sense is like Schopenhauer’s good will.”</p> <div style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br /> <hr align="left" size="1" width="33%"> <!--[endif]--> <div style="" id="ftn1"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Young <i style="">Schopenhauer </i>p. 230.</p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn2"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> See Young p. 232.<span style=""> </span>Young cites Schopenhauer WWR II: 155-6. </p> </div> </div>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-32953403323322423972007-12-04T05:58:00.000-08:002007-12-04T06:01:22.913-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.423 Of the will as the bearer of the ethical, nothing can be said.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>And the will as a phenomenon is interesting only to psychology.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Very Schopenhaurian/Kantian.<span style=""> </span>But then so is the kind of ethics he is talking about, and perhaps criticizing.<span style=""> </span>See Wiggins (2004, in <span style="font-style: italic;">Philosophy</span>) on this passage.<span style=""> </span>Some of Schopenhauer’s thoughts on ethics: The aim of all art is to communicate platonic Ideas, not concepts.<span style=""> </span>Allegorical paintings are mere hieroglyphics.<span style=""> </span>These Ideas are the various grades of the will’s objectification.<span style=""> </span>“[T]he Idea can be known only by perception; but knowledge of the Idea is the aim of all art.”<a style="" href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style=""> </span>Poetry uses abstract concepts, but skillful poets combine them in such a way that, given imagination in the reader, the desired idea is communicated.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">“The poet comprehends the Idea, man’s inner nature apart from all relations, outside all time, the adequate objectivity of the thing-in-itself at its highest grade.<span style=""> </span>Although even in the historian’s perspective, the inner nature, the significance of the phenomena, the germ within all those husks, can never be utterly lost (and he, at least, who seeks it, may still find it and recognise it), what is significant in itself and not in its relations, the real unfolding of the Idea, will be found far more accurately and distinctly in poetry than in history; and therefore, however paradoxical it may sound, far more actual genuine inner truth is to be imputed to poetry than to history.”<a style="" href="#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">“The poet is … the universal man; …<span style=""> </span>And no one has the right to prescribe to the poet what he ought to be – noble and sublime, moral, pious, Christian, one thing or another – still less to reproach him because he is one thing and not another.<span style=""> </span>He is the mirror of mankind, and brings to its consciousness what it feels and does.”<a style="" href="#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <i style=""><span style=""> </span></i><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">“For both in poetry and in painting we demand the faithful mirror of life, of man, of the world – only made more clear by the presentation and more meaningful by the arrangement.”<a style="" href="#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style=""> </span>Cf. 6.43 and <st1:place st="on"><st1:state st="on">Bearn</st1:State></st1:place> (<i style="">Waking to Wonder</i>)<i style=""> </i>on how the world of the happy differs by being more meaningful.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Perhaps here also see Schopenhauer <i style="">Fourfold Root </i>p. 211: “Now the identity of the subject of willing with that of knowing by virtue whereof (and indeed necessarily) the word “I” includes and indicates both, is the knot of the world, and hence inexplicable.”<span style=""> </span>Again, pp. 211-212: “But whoever really grasps the inexplicable nature of this identity, will with me call it the miracle “par excellence.””</p> <div style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br /> <hr align="left" size="1" width="33%"> <!--[endif]--> <div style="" id="ftn1"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Everyman edition of Schopenhauer’s WWR, p. 153.</p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn2"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Ibid., p. 155.</p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn3"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Ibid., p. 157.</p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn4"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Ibid., p. 158.</p> </div> </div>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-36869642290991061752007-12-03T11:14:00.000-08:002007-12-03T11:15:38.207-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.422 The first thought at the setting up of an ethical law of the form “thou shalt….” is: And what then, if I don’t do it?<span style=""> </span>It is clear, however, that ethics has nothing to do with punishment and reward in the ordinary sense.<span style=""> </span>Therefore this question as to the <i style="">consequences</i> of an act must be irrelevant. – At least these consequences should not be events.<span style=""> </span>Since something must be right in the putting of this question.<span style=""> </span>There must certainly be a kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but these must lie in the action itself.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>(And this too is clear, that the reward must be something agreeable, the punishment something disagreeable.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Ethics” here means ethics in the relevant sense.<span style=""> </span>If anyone wants to talk of ethics in some other sense, that is not contradicted here but ignored.<span style=""> </span>Why must there be something right in the question?<span style=""> </span>Perhaps because its form matches the form in which the Thou shalt is expressed, so it is, as it were, called for.<span style=""> </span>It must somehow, in some sense, be appropriate.</p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-85180409808927201982007-12-03T11:04:00.000-08:002007-12-03T11:14:16.354-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be articulated.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>Ethics is transcendental.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>(Ethics and aesthetics are one.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Is “It is clear” always a mark of irony in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Tractatus</span>?<span style=""> </span>Ethical and aesthetic value are beyond words, since no words we have will do, since what will satisfy is nothing in the world, i.e. nothing at all.<span style=""> </span>But is this really true?<span style=""> </span>Or is it only that no theory will satisfy us, just as physics is OK but the meta-theoretical “There are laws of nature” cannot work?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Some notes and quotes on Schopenhauer’s ethics: According to Schopenhauer, every living being is essentially egoistic, and yet in truth there is only one will, since the principle of individuation applies only to the phenomenal.<span style=""> </span>Wrong is what we call one will’s encroaching on another, seen at its extreme in cannibalism.<span style=""> </span>Right is a negative term, meaning only the opposite of this.<span style=""> </span>What is on the side of our will we call ‘good’, and what is opposed to it we call ‘bad’ or, rarely, ‘evil’.<span style=""> </span>“[T]hus every good is essentially relative, for it has its essential nature only in its relation to a desiring will.<span style=""> </span><i style="">Absolute good </i>is, therefore, a contradiction in terms …”<a style="" href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style=""> </span>The highest or ultimate good would be something that so satisfies the will that it never wanted again, but it is the nature of the will always to desire more, never to be satisfied.<span style=""> </span>So there can be no such thing: the concept is self-contradictory.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">“A theory of morals which is not properly argued – in other words, mere moralizing – can effect nothing, because it does not motivate.<span style=""> </span>A theory of morals which <i style="">does </i>motivate can do so only by working on self-love.<span style=""> </span>But what springs from this latter has no moral worth.<span style=""> </span>It follows that no genuine virtue can be produced through moral theory or abstract knowledge of any kind, but that such virtue must spring from that intuitive knowledge which recognises in the individuality of others the same essence as in our own.”<a style="" href="#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style=""> (This seems to have been Wittgenstein's view of moral philosophy. At least his remarks to O. K. Bouwsma later in his life about what possible value teaching moral philosophy could have strike me as compatible with what Schopenhauer says here.)<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">“Truly, it would be very bad if the chief business in human life, its ethical value, that value which counts for eternity, were dependent upon anything of which the attainment is so much a matter of chance as is the case with dogmas, religious doctrines, and philosophical theories.”<a style="" href="#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">“[I]n themselves all deeds (<i style="">opera operata</i>) are merely empty figures, and only the disposition which leads to them gives them moral significance.”<a style="" href="#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Goodness does come from knowledge, but not a knowledge that can be communicated.<span style=""> </span>Only the concept of this knowledge can be conveyed.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The negation of wickedness is justice.<span style=""> </span>“When we examine the kernel of this justice, we find in it the intention not to go so far in the affirmation of one’s own will as to deny the manifestations of will in others by compelling them to serve one’s own.<span style=""> </span>One will therefore wish to do as much for the benefit of others as one enjoys at their hands.<span style=""> </span>The highest degree of this disposition to justice (which, however, is always allied with real goodness whose character is now not merely negative) leads a man to doubt his right to inherited property; to want to maintain his body solely by his own energy, mental and physical; to feel every service rendered by others, every luxury, as a reproach; and ultimately, of his own free will, to embrace poverty.”<a style="" href="#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="">(Again very reminiscent of Wittgenstein's chosen way of life after World War I.)<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">“I by no means wish to conceal a criticism that relates to this last part of my exposition, but rather to point out that it inheres in the nature of the material, and that it cannot be helped.<span style=""> </span>[cf. Frege--DR]<span style=""> </span>It is this, that after our study has finally reached the point at which in perfect holiness we see the denial and surrender of all volition – and thereby the redemption from a world whose whole existence presented itself to us as suffering – this appears to us as a transition into <i style="">empty nothingness</i>.”<a style="" href="#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">“Every nothing is such only when thought of in relation to something else, and presupposes this relation [i.e. negation], and thus also this something else.<span style=""> </span>Even a logical contradiction is only a relative nothing.<span style=""> </span>It is not a thought of reason, but it is not on that account an absolute nothing; for it is a combination of words; it is an example of the unthinkable, which is necessary in logic in order to prove the laws of thought.<span style=""> </span>So, if for this purpose we seek such an example, we will hold fast to the nonsense as being the positive which we are in search of, and pass over the sense as the negative.”<a style="" href="#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">“What is generally accepted as positive, which we call <i style="">being</i>, and the negation of which is expressed by the concept <i style="">nothing</i> in its most general sense, is precisely the world as idea, which I have shown to be the objectivity and mirror of the will. …<span style=""> </span>Denial, suspension, conversion of the will are also the suspension and the disappearance of the world, its mirror.<span style=""> </span>If we no longer glimpse the will in this mirror, we ask in vain where it has gone, and then, because it has no longer any <i style="">where </i>and <i style="">when</i>, we lament that it has strayed into nothingness, and is lost.”<a style="" href="#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Cf. Heidegger and Wittgenstein’s comments about him and the Nothing, etc.<span style=""> </span>Also, perhaps, Russell (in <i style="">The Principles of Mathematics</i>)<i style=""> </i>on nothing: “Great difficulties are associated with the null-class, and generally with the idea of <i style="">nothing</i>.<span style=""> </span>It is plain that there is such a concept as <i style="">nothing</i>, and that in some sense nothing is something.” (p. 73)</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">“It is necessary to realize, in the first place, that a concept may denote although it does not denote anything.” (p. 73)</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">“The proposition which looks so paradoxical means no more than this: <i style="">Nothing</i>, the denoting concept, is not nothing, <i style="">i.e.</i> is not what itself denotes.” (p. 75)</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=""> </span>(So, according to Schopenhauer, the unthinkable is exemplified in logical contradiction, which is necessary to prove the laws of thought.<span style=""> </span>Why?<span style=""> </span>And the concept of nothing is always relative to some positive concept of being, yet which is positive and which is negative depends on how you see it, on what your purpose is, on the will.<span style=""> </span>You might, after all, be looking for an example of something negative in order to make a point about negation, about logic.<span style=""> </span>Perfect holiness = denial of the will = suspension of the world = having a sense of a nothingness in which being can be lost.<span style=""> </span>Philosophy can express this only negatively.<span style=""> </span>We might talk about ecstasy, union with God, etc., but such states cannot be counted as knowledge really, and cannot be communicated – they must be experienced first-hand.)<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Schopenhauer’s ethics do not present a view from nowhere, as he seems to think.<span style=""> </span>Instead they reflect his own pessimistic outlook.<span style=""> </span>So argues Konstantin Kolenda in “Schopenhauer’s Ethics: A View from Nowhere,” in von der Luft pp. 247-256.<span style=""> </span>If everyone’s direct experiences were consulted, neither pessimism nor optimism would win the day.<span style=""> </span>(But does Schopenhauer really claim to be able to identify values objectively?)</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Cf. Nietzsche <i style="">Beyond Good and Evil </i>§§55-56 on the nothing as a replacement for God in Schopenhauer.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Glock notes three problems with Schop’s ethics (see pp. 442-43): 1) they seem to require both denial of the will and altruistic willing in the form of compassion (see WWR vol. 2, chapters 47-49), 2) the denial of the will is itself an act of will, “will turning against itself” (WWR vol. I, p. 412), 3) the cosmic will, the blind force, the thing in itself, “is so quintessentially undesirable, it is difficult to see how the mystical experience of feeling at one with this will should provide a kind of moral salvation.”<a style="" href="#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">LW avoids all these problems by distinguishing, Glock says, between good and bad willing (see Notebooks 21, 24, and 29/7/16, and TLP 6.43).]<span style=""> </span></p> <div style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br /> <hr align="left" size="1" width="33%"> <!--[endif]--> <div style="" id="ftn1"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Everyman edition of Schopenhauer’s WWR, §65, p. 224.</p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn2"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Ibid., §66, p. 230.</p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn3"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Ibid., pp. 230-31.</p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn4"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Ibid., p. 232.</p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn5"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Ibid., p. 233.</p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn6"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Ibid., §71, p. 259.</p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn7"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Ibid., pp. 259-60.</p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn8"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Ibid., p. 260.</p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn9"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Hans-Johann Glock “Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein: Language as Representation and Will,” in Christopher Janaway (ed.) <i style="">The <st1:city st="on">Cambridge</st1:City> Companion to Schopenhauer </i><st1:city st="on">Cambridge</st1:City>: <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Cambridge</st1:PlaceName> <st1:placetype st="on">University</st1:PlaceType></st1:place> Press, 1999, pp. 422-458, pp. 442-43.</p> </div> </div>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-11371558543406672592007-12-03T11:02:00.000-08:002007-12-03T11:04:39.604-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.42 Hence there can also be no propositions of ethics.<span style=""> </span>Propositions can express nothing Higher.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mustn't "Higher" here be taken as nonsense? There is at least an air of self-contradiction here. <br /></p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-25050538514448479752007-12-03T10:59:00.000-08:002007-12-03T11:01:48.308-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside of it.<span style=""> </span>In the world everything is as it is and happens as it happens; there is no value <i style="">in</i> it – and if there were, then it [this value, that is] would be of no value.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>If there is a value, which is of value, then it must lie outside all happening and being-so.<span style=""> </span>Since all happening and being-so is accidental.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>What makes it non-accidental cannot lie <i style="">in</i> the world, since otherwise this would again be accidental.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>It must lie outside the world.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>I’m very close to <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Ogden</st1:place></st1:City> here, including the word ‘being-so’.<span style=""> </span>This seems like intentional nonsense to me.<span style=""> </span>Just the kind of Platonism, this time about value, that we see rejected a) throughout the <i style="">Tractatus</i>, and b) in recent dealings with such things as the law of causality.<span style=""> </span>Contingent value is not what is wanted, so only a transcendent value will do.<span style=""> </span>That is, only a nonsense will do.<span style=""> </span>So nothing will do, in fact.<span style=""> </span>Our desire is for something incoherent. <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Stokhof (p. 239): “Neither the <i style="">Tractatus </i>nor the <i style="">Notebooks </i>contains any argument or reasoning to establish the existence of values or their absolute character.<span style=""> </span>(Analogously, there is no argument for the absolute status of logic either.)<span style=""> </span>In other words, the entire construction is based on a certain kind of experience.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Wittgenstein might be thinking of Kant here.<span style=""> </span>Cf. <i style="">Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals</i> in the chapter on the dignity of virtue (pp. 77-78 in the second edition, p. 102 in H. J. Paton’s translation, Harper Torchbooks, 1964): “Skill and diligence in work have a market price; wit, lively imagination, and humour have a fancy price; but fidelity to promises and kindness based on principle (not on instinct) have an intrinsic worth.<span style=""> </span>In default of these, nature and art alike contain nothing to put in their place; for their worth consists, not in the advantage or profit they produce, but in the attitudes of mind—that is, in the maxims of the will—which are ready in this way to manifest themselves in action even if they are not favoured by success.”<span style=""> </span>Attitudes of mind alone can have dignity, and these might show themselves in behavior, but they are certainly not identical with any particular kinds of behavior.<span style=""> </span>Nor brain-states, etc.</p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-54107173097788230432007-12-03T10:58:00.000-08:002007-12-03T10:59:14.233-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.4 All propositions are of equal value.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Literally: All propositions are equivalent.<span style=""> </span>But presumably he doesn’t mean that.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Black (p. 370) says that the value in every case is zero, since “nothing of value is expressed by any significant proposition (6.41c).”</p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36235418.post-78397962920090824392007-12-03T10:57:00.002-08:002007-12-03T10:58:39.864-08:00<p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal">6.3751 It is impossible, that is, logically impossible, for, e.g., two colors to be at the same point in the field of vision, since this is excluded by the logical structure of color.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>Let us consider how this contradiction presents itself in physics.<span style=""> </span>Approximately thus: That a particle cannot have two velocities at the same time; meaning that it cannot be in two places at the same time; meaning that particles in different places at one time cannot be identical.</p> <p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>(It is clear that the logical product of two elementary propositions can be neither a tautology nor a contradiction.<span style=""> </span>The expression that a point in the field of vision has two different colors at the same time is a contradiction.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">These are rules, then, of the ‘logics’ of physics and of color.<span style=""> </span>These language-games have their own grammars, the later Wittgenstein would say.</p>DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com0